


strangers on a train

by MotherMaple



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Betty: Mechanic, Chance Meetings, F/M, Fluff, In which the combined powers of fate and a meddling roommate are too much to resist, Jughead: Writer, Meddling, Meet-Cute, New York City, Subways, fashion - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:07:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23601304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MotherMaple/pseuds/MotherMaple
Summary: "Honestly, he kind of thought he’d seen it all, until today.Because he’s never seen a woman in a wedding dress on the subway."
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones, Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz
Comments: 32
Kudos: 148
Collections: 7th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	strangers on a train

**Author's Note:**

> In which the author continues to try to spread joy.

Jughead has taken the subway every single day since he moved to New York almost five years ago. He’s seen people dressed in tuxedos, in fetish gear under long, concealing coats, in every shade of leggings and suede boots imaginable, in pyjamas, office wear, yoga gear; he’s even seen a guy in underpants and cowboy boots who seems to be some kind of local celebrity. 

He’s seen college-age kids having breakdowns that last exactly as long as it takes to get to their stop, seen old men helping young men with their neckties, seen young women, drunk and friendly, coaching complete strangers through a breakup. Once, he even had the misfortune to share a train with a crowd of celebrating game-goers at the end of a home-team win. It was more painted bare flesh than he’d ever hoped to encounter.

Honestly, he kind of thought he’d seen it all, until today. 

Because he’s never seen a woman in a wedding dress on the subway. 

She’s eating a granola bar and completely absorbed in a book - one of his favourites, according to the title on the spine - and she doesn’t look particularly upset so he figures she’s not a runaway bride, or worse. There’s a huge duffel bag at her feet (she’s wearing sneakers, not fancy wedding shoes, which is sensible given the number of stairs most of the stations have) and her hair is scraped into a messy kind of ponytail that doesn’t look intentional. Like it’s been styled and gelled, and then pulled back at the end of a long day. 

Her makeup is pretty elaborate - even he can see that - but she isn’t wearing any jewellery at all. No pearls, no heirloom earrings and, most notably, no significant baubles on her left ring finger. 

It’s very strange. 

He finds himself smiling as he watches her turn page after page, completely oblivious to the strange and questioning looks the other passengers give her. Her dress looks like it could take up three seats on its own, but she has it squashed and wrapped around her legs, the bulk of the fabric held firmly between her knees. 

Whatever she is, she’s no Bridezilla. 

(He knows, because he was recently the best man in a wedding featuring not one, but two, of those mythical creatures and he knows one when he sees one. Honestly, he’d thought better of his sister, but nope. The centrepieces were apparently her breaking point.) 

He fishes a little notebook out of his pocket and starts scribbling away in it, writing what he thinks could be her story, glancing at her every once in a while when a description fails him. 

She could, he supposes, be on her way to her own wedding, but the lack of ring and the messy hair kind of belie that. It’s possible she’s on her way to a costume party, or coming from a community theatre production of Legally Blonde 2. Maybe she lost a bet, or she’s pledging for a sorority. He’s seen students do some very strange things during rush week. His favourite is still the guy who rushed into his lecture hall, announced that there was a troll in the dungeons, and then collapsed in front of the lectern. 

There’s never a dull moment for a TA in New York. 

He’s amusing himself with a paragraph about a woman who’s so in love with the train conductor that she stalks him, all ready for their big day, when the unintelligible announcement that he recognizes as his stop comes over the speakers. Checking his pockets and putting his notebook away, he stands up and braces himself to fight against the boarding commuters. As the train lurches to a stop, the probably-not-bride looks up in surprise and appears to curse under her breath, leaping to her feet and shouldering her duffel bag as she darts toward the door. 

It starts to close on her enormous train and Jughead catches it just in the nick of time, letting her pull the yards of fluffy fabric free. 

“Thank you!” she gasps. “I forgot I was wearing this thing.”

The train screeches away, leaving them on a mostly-deserted platform and he smiles at her as she hauls the skirt up past her knees and throws it carelessly over her arm. “No problem,” he says. “Need a hand with that bag? Looks heavy.”

She’s almost standing on an angle to counterbalance it, but she hesitates. Wordlessly, he offers her his own much smaller bag as collateral and she lets him take the duffel. It weighs a ton. 

“What do you have in here? Bridesmaids?” he asks as they start up the stairs to the mezzanine.

“Flower girl,” she deadpans. “I left the bridesmaids in my other suitcase.”

Haha. He supposes he deserved that. “And the lucky groom?” he asks. “In your glove box?”

“Nah, he’s still in the broom closet at my mother’s house. Hanging up next to the mop and dustpan.” His confusion must show on his face because she rolls her eyes teasingly and elaborates. “You know, that movie Enchanted where she makes a prince out of a coat rack or something?”

“I knew you reminded me of someone! Giselle!” His sister loves that movie. He doesn’t hate it. 

“Most people call me Betty.”

They reach the street level and he holds the door for her again, letting her maneuver the dress through the narrow space.

“Jughead.”

Once they’re clear of the door, she stops and grins up at him. “Nice to meet you, and thanks again.” She tries to hand him his bag, but he finds himself unwilling to take it. 

“I’m heading North,” he says, tilting his head towards his apartment. “Is that on your way?”

“South,” she says, shrugging and smiling. “But thanks again for your help.”

“My pleasure.” He’s a little disappointed, but he doesn’t want to be _that guy,_ so they trade bags, and she grimaces slightly when the straps of hers dig into her bare shoulder. “You sure you’re okay with that thing?”

Betty nods and hikes her dress further up her legs, stuffing the excess skirt between the straps and the bag. “Oh yeah, I’m stronger than I look. But I do need to get this thing home before it turns into a pumpkin. It was nice meeting you!”

With that and a little wave, she turns and heads down the street, pedestrians dodging out of her path in a way he’s never seen in New York. 

The strange little encounter hovers in his mind for a few days until he manages to move onto a new brain invasion - the introduction of sriracha-glazed doughnuts at his favourite coffee shop that he just isn’t sure he can get behind - and then Betty-the-blonde-not-bride is relegated to the recess of his mind that he really only accesses when he can’t sleep. 

Which, admittedly, is often.

About a week after he kinda-sorta forgets about her, he stops dead in his tracks walking down Sixth Avenue, and just stares. Then, he bursts out laughing at his own lack of imagination.

Of course. She’s a _model._

There she is, larger than life with her hair down, and flowers and rings in place, smiling infectiously from a small billboard. He recognizes the dress and the woman, even without her bag and ponytail, and shakes his head in amusement before he walks on. 

It isn’t until later that it strikes him as odd that she would keep wearing the dress after her photoshoot.

  
  


.

.

.

Toni has a new girlfriend, and Jughead swears that if he has to hear one more thing about how amazing Cheryl Blossom is, his head is going to explode. He’s never met the object of his roommate’s affections, but he’s pretty sure he could describe her to a sketch artist if he had to, right down to the ‘adorable freckle’ she apparently has on her right thigh. 

Those late-night glasses of rosé have a _lot_ to answer for. 

Apparently, he’s going to get to know her a lot better, though, because an up-and-coming fashion designer that she’s backed - of course she’s loaded - is having a gala runway show of her new collection, and somehow, for some reason he can’t quite fathom, Jughead has scored one of the coveted invitations.

He whines, begs, bribes and threatens, but to no avail. Come Saturday night, he’s dressed in an actual tailored tuxedo and shoes so shiny he’s pretty sure he’ll get arrested if he places them too close to a dress, in the back of a damn limo and on his way to the meat-packing district. 

He is incredibly confused. 

(Later he’ll find out that they don’t actually pack meat there anymore.)

The designer, one Monica Luna, has rented out an entire nightclub for the show, with the upstairs serving as a sort of cocktail reception room and the main floor rowed with fragile-looking chairs that he’s shocked to discover cost more to rent than he would have paid for an Uber to get there. 

They’re _chairs._

Toni drags him up the stairs, moving so fast that her hair almost floats behind her and he feels like he’s breathing in cotton candy, and then she lets out a sultry “Hello, gorgeous,” and locks lips with a stunning red-head who definitely, to quote Rhett Butler, “knows how.”

The display is more intimate than obscene, but he still feels like he should give them some privacy.

He makes his way over to the bar, hoping against hope that they have something on offer that isn’t a hipster cocktail with a weird name and no flavour when he crashes headlong into a distracted blonde who’s tapping furiously on her phone.

She almost falls, and when he manages to get an arm around her waist in a move so shockingly slick that he almost feels like he deserves the tux for a second, she clutches his arm with neatly manicured fingernails. “Thank you!” she gasps, and he freezes. 

“Betty?” It’s dim inside, and he didn’t get a look at her face before they collided, but he’s heard her thank him before, just like that, and her pretty voice is still stored somewhere in his brain. 

Her head snaps up and the smile she flashes him is almost blinding. “You! We’ve got to stop meeting like this!”

Rescuing a beautiful woman from minor mishaps seems like a pretty good way to keep meeting, as far as he’s concerned, but it’s probably not that practical. Still, he’s not usually this smooth so he’s okay with her tripping all over him once in a while.

“No wedding dress tonight?” She’s wearing something sleek and black with angles and cut-outs, and severe silver jewellery. Her hair is in a high ponytail that looks intentional, straight as a die, and her makeup is dark and dramatic. She looks, simply, like the model she is. 

She laughs and smooths out her dress. “No, it’s laundry day so I’m stuck in this old thing. What brings you here?”

“My roommate dragged me. Her girlfriend knows the designer, I think.”

Impossibly, she brightens up even more. “You’re Toni’s Jughead! I should have realized there couldn’t be more than one.”

“You know Toni?”

“She wouldn’t shut up about you! Veronica - Monica tonight - is my best friend and I think she went to prep school with Cheryl? I’m pretty sure that’s how they met. Anyway, the four of us had a sort of girls’ night to celebrate the new boutique and … well. Drink was taken.” She laughs. “Apparently you’re all kinds of wonderful, and all kinds of single.”

He’s going to kill Toni. He thought she’d moved past that phase. 

“Well that’s half true, I guess.”

To his surprise, Betty looks a little bummed. “Oh. You’re not single?”

That was … not the reaction he expected. What the Hell did Toni say? “Very single. Wonderfulness is debatable.”

Her expression clears and she nudges him lightly. “False modesty is only charming in the movies.”

“Sorry.” He grins at her mock-reproving glare. “How’s this: I’m the world’s okayest TA, I’ve been very persistently writing a novel since I was 16, and I make the best boxed macaroni and cheese you’ve ever tasted.”

“Better.”

This entire conversation should be surreal - he thinks he’s actually flirting, and the quirky, well-read, absolutely drop-dead gorgeous woman he’s flirting with seems to be responding to it. If he hadn’t met her on the fucking subway in a real-life wedding dress, he’d say this was the strangest thing to ever happen to him.

“So.” He gropes blindly for something to say, and finally remembers that he was on his way to the bar. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Sounds great.” She leads the way - the crowd parts for her again - and flags down the bartender.

“I liked your billboard,” he says, once they have their drinks and make their way to a small cocktail table. “Have you been modelling long?”

She almost chokes on her Manhattan and half laughs, half wheezes into a napkin before she answers: “You think _I’m_ a model?”

“Well,” he gestures inarticulately at her, and the catwalk, and raises his eyebrows like _duh._ “Yeah. Aren’t you?”

Still half laughing, “That billboard was just a favour for Veronica. I’m a _mechanic,”_ she says, emphatically, like there’s absolutely no way he should have made that mistake, as if she isn’t sitting there looking like Anna Wintour would give a kidney to get her on the cover of Vogue.

“Really? That’s awesome! What do you like to work on?” She looks gratified, like she can sense the enthusiasm in his voice. He likes cars, he’s worked with his hands - he has something real in common with her.

“Anything older than me,” she grins. “It’s more fun when the computer can’t tell you what’s wrong. One time I fixed an imported car with a bucket of water and some duct tape.” She sips her drink and shrugs. “Well, temporarily fixed anyway.”

“You can do that?” 

“I _did."_ She says it like she’s not sure you _can,_ but nobody died so it’s probably okay. 

“Jeez. First time I tried to change my own oil, I put the mechanic’s daughter through a whole year of orthodontia trying to get it fixed.”

She winces sympathetically. “I’ve seen a few of those. It’s an easy mistake for a beginner to make.”

“Easy and humiliating.” Self-deprecation isn’t the same as false modesty, and she laughs. 

“It’s Saturday,” she says finally. “Come into the garage sometime and we’ll talk shop when I’m on the clock. Tell me about your book.”

He wishes everyone was this easy to talk to - he’s on home turf outlining the basic plot of his novel, and when Betty starts drawing comparisons to other true crime novels she’s already read, he slaps his hand on the table in actual, honest-to-goodness delight. 

They talk for hours, with a short break to watch the runway show, and well into the after-party. They talk about his book and her cat and his bike and the movies they both love. They went to the same college for undergrad and had the same cranky communications professor who didn’t allow coffee in the lecture hall. He tells her about the short story he wrote about her on the subway and she giggles until she’s almost in tears when he lets her read it, his notebook ever-present in his pocket. 

‘Have you _seen_ the conductor on that train?” she laughs. “He’s old enough to be my grandfather!”

They take turns buying drinks and they both switch to seltzer after three rounds. Her chair gets closer to his as the party gets louder; she touches his arm for emphasis when she talks.

The bar shuts at midnight, and just before one the cleaners come in. Betty looks around and for the first time, Jughead realizes that they’re almost alone. Where Toni disappeared to, he doesn’t know, but he thinks she’ll forgive him for ditching her. 

“I guess we should get out of their way,” he says, smiling apologetically at a frowning woman with a long broom. 

“I guess.” She bites her lip and thinks for a minute. “Toni actually gave me your number … would it be alright if I used it?”

He’s going to make Toni breakfast; gluten-free vegan pancakes and all.

“Please do,” he blurts. “Like, literally any time.”

They weave through the staff collecting the fragile-looking chairs, and out of the club. “Can I get you a cab?” he asks, since the valets are all long gone, presumably along with the limo he arrived in. 

On the dark, deserted sidewalk, something clicks, and she hits him with a look that makes his knees go weak. “Share one with me?”

He’s not sure who moves first, just that they meet somewhere in the middle and then her hands are on his jaw, and his cradle her waist and the back of her neck, and oh, _God,_ can she kiss. It’s hot and filthy and she arches her back a bit so he has to lean over her and she actually moans, teasing his lips and making him chase hers. She drops her head back to catch her breath and he moves to her neck instead, lets his teeth find her skin, almost tastes her heartbeat; her hand fists in his hair and he spins her around, pressing her into a cement wall. She gasps and whispers _‘yes,'_ her leg sliding around his thigh. 

He wants, desperately, to know what’s under her dress, and she’s tugging at his tux like she wishes it wasn’t there, but it’s still New York in the middle of the night and being this distracted is a terrible idea. 

“Taxi,” he mumbles, nibbling on her ear while she claws at his back and whimpers, every part of her body way too close to every part of his. “Come home with me.”

“I live alone,” she counters. “You come with me.”

.

.

.

Later, much later, after he wakes up with his ears still ringing and fingernail marks stinging on his shoulders; after he wakes Betty up, whispering between her thighs; after they eat breakfast; after she lets him use her shower and ambushes him on the bathroom counter; after he finally heads home to thank Toni for her glowing recommendation, he remembers that he still wants to ask Betty why she wore the dress on the train.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Jandy! She swears that being my beta isn't torture, but I seriously don't deserve her. Also she came up with the title for this, and we giggled because the movie that it references has absolutely nothing in common with the story, but that seems very apt for Jughead, who sometimes makes references that are ... less than apt.
> 
> ALSO - in the spirit of spreading joy. My dear fellow buggies, if you're not waist-deep in the works of thepointoftheneedle (@fastglass33 on Tumblr) you are seriously depriving yourselves. Do yourselves a favour, and head over to https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepointoftheneedle/pseuds/thepointoftheneedle I think I left part of my heart in their comments. 
> 
> ALSO II - can any of my fellow comic fans link the one where the hot new kid in town overheats his fancy imported sports car? Veronica offers him her credit card to call a tow truck, but Betty literally sends him to Pop's for a bucket of water and gets him sorted out with no bother? I can't find it anywhere.


End file.
